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For All Time (Part 1)
For All Nails #9: For All Time (Part 1) by Noel Maurer (with apologies to Chet.) ---- :From the New York Herald Monthly Review of Books :May 1974 Two years ago, Robert Sobel published For Want of A Nail. Intended as a summary history for professionals, For Want of A Nail became a minor bestseller in a nation looking to understand its peculiar place in the world and, perhaps more importantly, the dislocations of its southern neighbor. Sobel was highly criticized for what many called an anti-Mexican bias throughout his work. The book was, in fact, banned from sale in Mexico, which only contributed to its popularity in North America. Nevertheless, the author strongly denied any anti-Mexican bias. Sobel did, however, admit to being biased against the North American Rebellion. In a buried footnote on page 185 of For Want of A Nail, Sobel wrote: "My own feeling is that a rebel victory would have signaled the beginning of an age of anarchy, in which western civilization might have been crushed." That quote, in a buried footnote, attracted the most vituperative criticism of Sobel's work. In his new book, For All Time, Sobel has decided to address his critics, but in a most peculiar fashion. Rather than a conventional historical analysis, For All Time is what the author calls "counterfactual history." That is to say, For All Time is a history of events that never happened, complete with false footnotes, invented historical personages, and imaginary countries. The premise is, of course, that the rebels are victorious at the Battle of Saratoga, which eventually leads to a British withdrawal from most of North America and the creation of a new nation, the United States of America. Britain retains control of the northern reaches of the continent, which eventually become the nation of Canada. The constitution of the USA, predictably, resembles the original constitution of the USM. The first president is George Washington. Surprisingly, given the author's priors, the new nation falls prey to neither anarchy nor foreign powers (although it fails miserably in a brief attempt to seize Canada). Rather, for the first sixty years of its existence, the imaginary republic thrives and expands, seizing the northern half of Mexico and prospering mightily. The first sign of Sobel's dystopic intent come in Europe, where the Paris uprising of 1789 becomes a generalized social revolution, leading to the collapse of the monarchy. An expansionist regime takes power, and plunges the Continent into two decades of war. Eventually a coalition led by Britain restores something like the order which preceded it, and Europe returns to stability --- but the aftereffects of the American Rebellion and the wars against France will continue to reverberate. In North America, the fictitious USA, like the real USM, is utterly unable to deal with the institution of slavery. There is no peaceful abolition. Rather, slavery provokes increasingly violent disputes between the states that permit it and those that do not, ultimately leading to the secession of the Southern Confederation and Jefferson and a long and bloody war to reconquer them. The war, as described, is truly horrific, making the Rocky Mountain War seem like a mere skirmish. Over 300,000 soldiers die, the South is impoverished, and although slavery is abolished in 1864 American race relations are permanently poisoned. After the Civil War, the author has both America and Europe enter a period of sustained peace and prosperity. Lest one think, however, that the avoidance of the Bloody Eighties means that Sobel is deviating from dystopia, Europe is plunged into a devastating and utterly pointless conflict in 1914. The descriptions of the war are fascinating. Unlike the real Global War, the combatants in Sobel's "First World War" (the name is as ominous as it sounds) have neither effective airmobiles nor masses of motorized vehicles. The result is a grinding and horrendous stalemate, as a British-French coalition throws away millions of lives against entrenched German lines on the Western Front. On the Eastern Front, the war leads to the collapse of the Tsarist regime. Instead of breaking up, however, Russia falls under the control of a group of radical socialists calling themselves "Communists." They proceed to establish a dictatorship more brutal and more controlling than anything in real history, slaughtering more of their own citizens than even Bruning attempted and eliminating almost all private property. (We will return to the "Communists" later: their rise is directly connected to the victory of the Rebellion.) The USA gets involved in the First World War in 1917 despite suffering fewer provocations and with fewer ties to Britain than the CNA possessed in 1939. Like Mexico, Sobel's fictitious nation is possessed with a militaristic streak. The British-French-American coalition "wins" the war, but it is a bitter victory. Disillusioned, the USA turns in upon itself. In Europe, the Communists win a bloody civil war, reconquering most of the Russian Empire, and Germany becomes an uneasy and unstable republic. In 1929, a series of mistakes by the American central bank turns what would otherwise be a severe recession into a decade-long economic catastrophe. The parallel is with the 1937 recession, but in Sobel's world idealistic governments prove unable to make the correct decisions and the downturn is severely prolonged. In Germany a right-wing dictatorship rises to power, led by a madman who preaches against all the liberal values of the Enlightenment. Across Europe, democracies fail. In Asia, Japan begins an imperialist expansion. A Second World War is indeed inevitable, and breaks out in 1939. In what is perhaps the weakest part of the book, the USA is drawn into the war when Japan launches a sneak attack against its Hawaiian possession in 1941. Why Japan would launch a clearly suicidal attack against a much more powerful enemy is never clearly explained. The Second World War is fought between a coalition of the USA and Britain, aligned with a brutal Russian Communist dictatorship, against Germany and Japan. Germany's regime, the National Socialists, preach racial superiority and reject the Enlightenment. Unbelievably, they begin to slaughter Europe's Jews in a horrifyingly mechanical way, creating massive industrial death camps. The Japanese in Asia are less systematic, but no less fanatical. The American-Russian coalition eventually brings them down, but only due to the precocious development of the atomic bomb by the USA, which it then (improbably) shares with its Russian allies. No less than eight atomic bombs are used against the Germans and Japanese. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the USA again tries to turn inward, leaving half the world under the control of the Communist behemoth, a Russian empire that stretches from Italy and central Germany in the west to Indochina in the east. The Russians are unafraid to use atomic weapons to maintain their empire, and they do, indiscriminately. There is no equivalent of the Mason Doctrine. Rather, western Europe is left to fend for itself. Predictably, the countries of Europe become impoverished and fall into dictatorship. Britain is forced to withdraw from its empire, but only after using nuclear weapons in Burma. France uses even more atomic weapons to maintain its empire in northern Africa. In the southern half of Africa, however, the colonial powers are succeeded not by independent (if poor and unstable) independent states, but by an expansionist South Africa bent on establishing white rule over the Africans and enslaving the entire continent. Western Europe stumbles from crisis to crisis. France falls into civil war, and for a brief period comes to be ruled by an African military officer who declares himself Emperor and institutes --- yes --- state-sponsored cannibalism. Britain exhausts itself attempting to defend its empire. By 1970, it is facing Irish and Welsh terrorism in the home islands. The USA is no better off. The attempt to re-impose de facto slavery after abolition produces the inevitable result by the 1950s, when the country begins to face an increasingly violent rebellion on the part of its African population. A Communist regime in Argentina takes power, and involves the USA in a war (also using atomic weapons) followed by a long and painful occupation. Mexico --- the half which remained independent --- also falls into disorder. By 1971, when the book ends, the USA is facing guerrilla wars at home and abroad, the half of Europe not under Communist control is at war for the third time in a century, and those who do live under Communism are under a dictatorship so absolute that Sobel has to invent a word for it: "totalitarian." Millions are dead, not just from war and starvation (as in our world), but from deliberate industrial genocides and state-sponsored cannibalism. It is, in short, a dark vision intended to make us realize how lucky we are. This dark vision does, in fact, stem directly from the author's view of the ideology behind the men who organized the North American Rebellion. If there is a theme to Sobel's horrorific dystopia, it could be summed as "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." The rebels in North America were the most idealistic and utopian of men... To Be Continued Forward to FAN #10:If You Steal My Sunshine. Forward to May 1974: For All Time (Part 2). Return to For All Nails. Category:Robert Sobel